Training

TMIP develops and delivers seminars, web-seminars (webinars) and workshops on all aspects of transportation analysis, modeling and simulation. TMIP also serves as technical contact for some of the National Highway Institute (NHI) travel modeling related courses. You may access all of the past TMIP webinar summaries here. For future offerings, you may sign up for our webinar announcement email list or suggest webinar topics here.

Below is a listing of training materials for both new and experienced travel model practitioners alike. The FHWA Resource Center Planning Team also identifies a number of training opportunities on their website.

Training Courses

Introduction to Travel Demand Forecasting Self-Instructional CD-ROM
TMIP has created a self-instructional CD-ROM to help those who are just starting out in travel demand forecasting to understand the basic concepts. For these users, the CD contains a "Certificate" track, which guides the user through all the instructional content and prints a certificate upon completion. The CD is also useful for decision makers and the public, who only need a high-level overview of the travel demand forecasting process. For these users, we included an "Executive" track, which focuses only on key concepts of how travel models work. Length: self-guided. To get the CD, contact Sarah Sun or download the file and burn to a CD. (ISO format, 59 MB)

Introduction to Urban Travel Demand Forecasting (NHI - 152054)
Through classroom lectures and interactive workshops, this introductory course covers the traditional four-step modeling process of trip generation, trip distribution, mode choice, and trip assignment. The course includes presentations on land use inputs, network and zone structures, time of day factoring, and reasonableness checking. Length: 4 days.

Advanced Freight Planning (NHI - 139003)
This course expands on freight topics covered in other FHWA-developed freight planning courses to provide techniques and strategies designed for those individuals directly involved in the implementation of transportation planning, programming and allocation of resources. It provides participants with the skills needed to identify, prioritize, develop and implement freight supportive projects. This is an advanced level course and it focuses heavily on resources and solutions, and how those solutions can be applied to developing plans and programs for public and private sectors. Length: 2 days.

Recorded Webinar Series

Travel Modeling Workshop
This series of webinars introduces the development of model estimation data sets, the structures of the various model components, and the procedures for estimating models. The workshop includes lectures, discussion, and "homework," that participants are expected to complete between sessions. Each session is 2-hour long including Q/A. Length: 9 sessions.

Forecasting Land Use Activities
The series is intended for transportation and land use planners in Metropolitan Planning Organizations, federal and state agencies involved in transportation and land use, and planners in local governments. It is designed to provide a working knowledge of how land use forecasting is done, what are its benefits and costs, and how to make assessments for implementing tools for land use forecasting.

The TMIP Land Use Forecasting Webinar series provides a systematic treatment of the development of land use forecasts and their integration with transportation models. The series presents the evolving use of land use forecasting tools in regional transportation planning, drivers of land use change; alternative frameworks for developing such forecasts and their strengths and weaknesses; the development of data for land use forecasting and the most common problems encountered in this process. The series also includes individual sessions to provide a more in-depth exploration of three systems: I-PLACE3S, PECAS, and UrbanSim. It concludes with a synthesis and pragmatic recommendations for implementing tools for land use forecasting and integrating them into the planning process. Each session is 2-hour long including Q/A. Length: 8 sessions.

Activity-Based Modeling (ABM)
The webinar series is designed for travel modeling practitioners with varying levels of expertise and familiarity with the concepts of activity-based modeling. The first three sessions focuses on executive and managerial details and are intended for practitioners and managers. The remaining nine sessions are technical and therefore intended for practitioners. Sessions consists of 2 hours of presentation followed by 30 minutes of Q/A. Length: 12 sessions.